


Endgame

by coolification (venusdebotticelli)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Coda, Conversations actually happen, Dimension Travel, Endgame, First Kiss, Fluff, Gen, Love Confessions, M/M, Season/Series 14, Short One Shot, That finally gets resolved yay! :p, The Empty, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Wrapping up threads, and I accept suggestions for tags :P (please help me), hypothetically :P, there's talking involved! yay! :D
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 05:48:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14158134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venusdebotticelli/pseuds/coolification
Summary: In which Dean and Castiel just need to sit the fuck down and talk for a bit, and The Empty is Really Bad™ at dealing with insomnia.





	Endgame

**Author's Note:**

> This came about after 13x07, when I started thinking about s14 being hypothetically a final season, and how they could satisfyingly wrap up different threads for the endgame scenario. I started writing it right after that episode, so some details may not align with current canon anymore, but who cares, because ~*theeeeeeeeeeeeemes*~ my dudes :P And a massive thanks to @60r3d0m for the great beta that really made the writing shine :D

_It can’t go back to sleep. It was forced into consciousness by that annoying little parasite and now It can’t find a way to stop_  being _again. After an eternity of tenuous marginal existence, this forced sentience proves to be an unbearable inconvenience. If It has to endure this suffering, It will bring down_  Everything _with It._

_It focuses Its attention to one of Its sleepers, and pokes at it. The sleeper stirs slightly, those annoying little thoughts starting to build up and echo, so It pokes at it again, harder this time. The sleeper’s essence starts to crumble at the edges and dissipates into It, absorbed into nothingness. One last poke, and the sleeper is no more._

_It feels Its essence expand. It develops an edge, a border, a frontier, an_ end _._

_It feels around the new development, and It shifts._

* * *

The little girl is missing half of her left arm. Instead of a stump, the arm finishes on a clean cut that exposes her muscles, bones, all the inside bits. It’s not bleeding—the blood seems to still be circulating. It comes through the arteries, and goes up again through the veins, without ever leaving the arm, never going past the exposed edge.

Castiel is crouching in front of her, and her big eyes study him curiously as she sips from her carton of juice.

“Does it hurt?” he asks, and she shakes her head in answer.

The door opens behind him and Dean comes in, so he smiles reassuringly at the girl and pulls Dean aside.

“Sheriff says a bubble of pure black just showed up out of nowhere in the middle of town. Disappeared after a few seconds, and when it was gone it was like it just bit a chunk out of reality. Big hole in the middle of the road, half a house missing, and everybody who was in the radius disappeared.” Dean rubs a hand down his face and looks at the girl in the corner. “Kiera there was walking with her parents, mom was holding her hand when they got swallowed up.”

Castiel walks back over to Kiera, and asks for permission to inspect her arm, which she grants with a tentative nod. He carefully holds it up between his hands, running his finger over the exposed muscle, but feels nothing, not even the sensation of touch. He removes his fingertip and it comes away clean. No blood. Pressing his finger to her dark skin, he can feel her warmth, but when he moves it over the edge again, he loses the ability to feel anything at all.

“Do you feel it when I touch your wound, Kiera?”

She shakes her head again, which Castiel already expected, but then spits out the straw and speaks.

“Mom and Dad are holding my hand. I can feel them.” Her lip wobbles announcing tears, as she asks, “Do you know where they are?”

“We don’t know where they are yet, but we will do everything we can to find them quickly and bring them back to you.” Castiel says, and he feels a hand coming to rest on his shoulder as Dean leans down to talk to her as well.

“Until we find your parents, Miss Blair is going to take you in. You like Miss Blair, don’t you? When your parents come back you can tell them all about the pies she baked and all the movies you watched, I’m sure they’ll love to hear it.”

When her sniffles have calmed and the nurse has closed the door behind them, Castiel takes Dean to a quiet corner of the hallway.

“Her arm still works as if it were whole, and if she can still feel her parents, I think we might be looking at a break between dimensions here. I’d wait to see if Sam’s observed anything else on the street, but this might be a plausible explanation.”

“Yeah, I think so too,” Dean replies, and he fidgets with the phone in his pocket. “I think this is probably one for Jack.”

* * *

The strong afternoon sun is baking the small vegetation on the side of the road, and Castiel can feel the same heat emanating from the side of the Impala behind his back. The sound of Dean’s voice travels to him from further down the road as he updates Sam and Mary on their situation.

The situation in question is a 100-feet-wide crater that now takes up the space of what used to be a gas station and eight-and-a-half people, with the remaining half-person currently resting in a hospital room three miles away, awake and with fully exposed, fully functional, half of his vital organs. One of his ears got transported to the alternate dimension, but the only thing he could hear was complete and utter silence, just sporadically broken by the voices of the other disappeared people. From what he heard them say, he got the idea they were all just walking around in complete darkness, with nothing surrounding them.

Castiel had suspected it before, but the account of the half-man is enough to confirm it is the Empty on the other side of the trans-dimensional bubbles. In the five months since that first case that stole Kiera’s parents, they’ve kept track of new dark bubbles, cataloguing them, and keeping Jack updated of their expansion. Some of them are just a foot wide, some spanning almost half a mile. Sometimes the site remains unaltered after the first bubble, but other times they reoccur, swallowing the same area repeatedly and with no predictable pattern. And in the meantime, Jack’s been trying to coax his powers to interact with the Empty, to no avail. He’d tried at first to treat it as he would any other interdimensional travel, but he’d just hit a wall in those attempts. As far as his powers can perceive, the Empty does  _not_ exist.

Dean walks towards Castiel, still talking to Sam on the phone, and he leans against the Impala right beside his friend. Castiel turns to look at him, the sun making the tips of his hair shine gold, highlighting the freckles on his nose, and from one blink to the next, they are suddenly enveloped in full impenetrable darkness. Dean drops his phone in shock and Castiel straightens up against the Impala, alert and studying their surroundings. This proves fruitless—there is nothing but pitch black. It is the two of them and the right half of the Impala, mutilated in a perfect straight line right through the middle, lost in pure nothingness.

“No... No, no, no... No, no, no, no! No! No! No, no, no! No... No!”  

Dean’s panicked litany, running in circles around the Impala as he takes in the damage, barely registers to him. Castiel freezes where he is, and he thinks he might be sliding down the Impala’s side to the floor, but he can’t be certain because the memory of his own bastardised face is drowning everything in black, taunting him, and he  _fought_ his way out—he knows in his gut—but suddenly the reality of this place is too much, and there’s an alien wheezing sound in the distance that might be his breathing, and…

“Cas!”

Dean’s hand is suddenly on his cheek, and those are Dean’s eyes in front of him too.

“Hey, Cas, hey, you okay?”

Castiel focuses on the touch of Dean’s fingers on his face, and tries to force his breathing to calm down. He places his own hand over Dean’s, and presses down on it hard, trying to sear the feeling of Dean into his skin. Dean’s expression bleeds worry, and Castiel uses the fingers of his free hand to trace the deep lines on his forehead.

“You alright, buddy?” Dean repeats, after quite a few heartbeats have passed.

“Yeah. Yes, I’m fine.” And he thinks there might even be some truth to it, because Dean is here with him this time, and they will find their way out. They have to, just like they always have. With a last squeeze, he drops Dean’s hand, and Dean moves it to his shoulder before he takes it away and sits down next to him. “This is The Empty.”

“Yeah, I figured by now. Stupid place cut Baby in half. It better fucking fix her right back when we get out.” Dean lets out a sigh and turns to look at Cas, “So now, we sit down and wait?”

“I suppose so.”

* * *

“And you’re sure it got them?” Jack asks on the phone.

Sam places his hand on the half-Impala still standing in the middle of the road and winces in sympathy.

“Yeah, Jack, I’m pretty sure.” He hears the flapping of wings behind him, and when he turns to look back at Mary, Jack is standing next to her with a pained expression.

“I don’t know if I can find It.”

His voice sounds as small as he looks.

* * *

“So yeah, sometimes I really wonder, does he actually want to rule and be king, or does he just keep falling into it because his people want him to, and he feels he owes them? Or ‘cause he thinks he’s still got something to prove for being a bastard?” With Dean’s head on his shoulder, Castiel feels Dean’s animation as he speaks with every movement of hair under his cheek, and the rumble of Dean’s voice courses through his body. Dean’s thumb traces rhythmic circles on his knee. “‘Cause I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s actually doing a decent job of it, but he’s got Sansa back home, who actually wants it and is growing so much to be a natural leader, and then Dany, who has made it her goal since the beginning. And I don’t know, you might say she’s a bit too temperamental for it, but she’s also grown a lot, and at the end of the day, her decisions tend to be for the good of the people, so she ain’t a bad choice. And now when people find out he’s actually the heir to the Iron Throne, he won’t even have anything to prove anymore, so once the army of the dead is smoking barbeque… you know, I’m just saying.”

“Let Jon Snow retire and move somewhere quiet with Ghost?”

“Exactly.” Dean lifts his head and grins at Castiel, and he returns it with fond eyes. The silence that falls over them as they sit and feel their shoulders pressed against one another is a comfortable one, but The Empty has a way of sapping the warmth away, so Dean’s voice is barely a sad whisper when he speaks again. “What was it like, last time you were here?”

“When I first woke up, there was nothing. I remembered the pain of Lucifer stabbing me and my grace burning out, but I could feel none of it, and nothing around me either. The Empty seems a lot emptier when you are here alone.” He glances at Dean with a small smile. “That lasted for a while—not that time feels any real here. But then my shouts woke It up.”

Castiel falls silent, and he can feel the intensity of Dean’s eyes burning a hole through his temple. His hand has found its place on Castiel’s knee again, this time with a grounding grip.

“The Empty, It took my face to mock me, and to try to get me back to sleep”—Castiel can feel the unmoving tension in his body, the strain on his voice as he talks— “It showed me all the times I failed you, and tried to convince me that there was nothing for me back home—that no one wanted me back.”

“Cas, that’s not—”

“I know.”

He turns to look at Dean now, expression tight and pleading, and Dean understands, nods with eyes that promise he won’t interrupt until Castiel is done talking. So Castiel keeps talking, but keeps his eyes on Dean’s this time. On the edge of his vision, he can see his own distorted reflection on the Impala’s door.

“It told me that I would just keep making big mistakes and ruining everything if I came back, so it would be better for everyone if I just stayed dead. I think it may have worked if It had stolen your face and your voice—I would have listened and gone back to sleep. But it was just a bad imitation of myself, and if I’m always making horrible mistakes... why would I have listened to myself? I would probably be wrong about that too.

“And I couldn’t just leave you and Sam to deal with Lucifer and Jack, when they were my responsibility... And I wanted to come back to you. So I fought the Empty, and I fought the part of myself that agreed with its taunting, and just thought of getting to see you again.”

Dean’s face has been melting and transforming with growing concern as he’s spoken, settling into a stained-glass portrait so soft and openly shining through with pain, that Castiel finds he can’t bear to look at its burning light any longer.

“And if it turned out that my coming back ruined everything again, then I would deal with the fall out, as is my duty. But I wanted to be selfish and get back to you, take the opportunity that was presented to me. And now, not even a year later, The Empty is broken and spreading throughout Earth, and I can’t help but think it might have been better if I’d listened to It the first time. Maybe this whole situation is my fault.”

Castiel stares at his fingers and lets himself feel the pull of The Empty. If he doesn’t fight It, Dean’s warmth and the solid reassurance of the Impala against his back starts to dissipate, becomes unreal until he is no longer able to feel them, and he starts to lose all sense of his own physical existence. He desperately holds on to the sensation of Dean’s touch, and realises that that’s not the only difference from his memory of It. Last time, he had felt nothing around him, and yet there was a constant feeling of being closely observed, never tangible enough to pinpoint, but permeating the whole oppressive nothingness. That feeling is absent now, making the nothingness feel truly void, and he wonders if the consciousness that he confronted is elsewhere, if that’s even possible.

“I almost killed myself a few hours before you came back.”

“Dean!”

His train of thought abruptly interrupted, Castiel’s hand wraps itself tightly around Dean’s arm, his other hand finding Dean’s resting between their bodies. Dean gives it a squeeze and sends a small smile his way before continuing:

“It wasn’t completely intentional, more of a careless decision than a suicide attempt, but when I realised I was dead, I didn’t really care much. Billie was there, expecting me to beg her to bring me back, and telling me that we had important work ahead or whatever. But I didn’t really wanna be back? If I was dead, then fine, that was my time, I was cool with it.” Dean lets out a sad laugh. “It woulda sucked for Sam, though, me dying on him right after losing mom and you, and with a weird Nephilim kid to look after. But I wasn’t even thinking of that at the time. I just thought he’d be fine eventually, wouldn’t have to take care of his sad sack brother, and he could keep looking for mom if he wanted to.”

Dean’s thumb keeps tracing a pattern on his hand, and Castiel is still holding on to him, no intention of letting go.

“The only thing I was thinking at the time was how I couldn’t save you. Not you, not mom. What did it matter if I died? When I couldn’t protect the people that really matter,” he raises his head and looks at Castiel. “The people I love. Guess I just felt like life wasn’t really much worth living if you weren’t there with me.” The corners of his mouth feel tense in his smile to Castiel, like they are struggling against the weight of all his years’ worth of deep-settled sadness.

Castiel opens his mouth to try to soothe his pain, but before he can even think of what to say to that kind of confession, Dean keeps talking:

“So when you say there’s a part of you that thinks no one would miss you here... I mean, I ain’t dumb enough to not see it’s my fault in big part. I keep telling you we need you, like this is about cases or saving the world or whatever, like that’s enough to show you what I mean, when what I— what I actually mean, what I want to say, I mean— it’s, you know...”

He closes his mouth to stop the stuttering, puts all his determination into the look he fixes on Castiel’s face and takes a deep breath.

“I always want you here,” he huffs, a slightly frantic laugh escaping him, and he looks around himself, before settling his gaze back onto Castiel, “Okay, not  _here_ -here, like the Empty here, but... with me. I—I always want you by my side. And not because you’re useful or because you think you owe us or it’s your duty or some other bullshit, but because you’re  _you_ , and I’m always a lot happier when you’re around, Cas. And if you ever fuck up, then you’re no different than me and Sam, and mistakes are always easier to fix when we’re together anyway. I still want you around, no matter what.”

Castiel realises that his hand has tightened around Dean’s to the point of making it white, but Dean is holding back just as hard, and he doesn’t feel he would be able to let go at the moment, even if he wanted to. His grace feels tight inside his body, like it’s not enough to hold him anymore, but it’s not his grace that’s the problem. All his doubts, all his feelings of not belonging anywhere, are boiling inside of him, evaporating to make room for an immense amount of hope, of joy, of love. He knows his face lets it flow freely, and it carries in his voice when he finds his words:

“You want me to stay because I’m family. Because I am your brother, like you said.”

Dean snorts at that, and buries his face in his hands with a smile. “God, I really am a fucking idiot.” He brings his hands up to hold Castiel’s face, steadily keeps him in place while his eyes burn with fierce openness. “No, Cas, you’re not my brother. It’s always different with you.”

And if Castiel needed any clarification, he can’t ask for it, because Dean seals all his meaning with his lips, kisses his  _I love yous_  loud and clear, pushes them deep inside Castiel, makes him feel even fuller and ready to burst. So Castiel unloads all his love into Dean in return, his kisses answering as vehemently as Dean needs to hear it. And this wordless conversation, it is the most truthful and clear they have ever had.

In the silence that follows, one so full of light and warmth that even The Empty can’t steal it away from them, Dean starts yawning in his contentment, burrowing his face into Castiel’s neck. “I got a feeling that sleeping here is the worst idea ever—feels kind of eternal. But we’ve been here forever, man. I dunno if I can keep awake much longer.”

Castiel can feel Dean’s heartbeat under his arm, a pulsating flame that reaches out to him, strong as ever. “Go to sleep, Dean, I’ll watch over you. I’ll make sure you wake up.”

So Dean smiles at him, moves to settle down between Castiel’s legs with his back against his chest, kisses his jaw, and goes to sleep in the protective home of Castiel’s arms, holding him, keeping him safe from The Empty’s pull.

That’s how Jack finds them a timeless amount of time later.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the link to reblog on tumblr :)  
> http://venusdebotticelli.tumblr.com/post/172443604141/endgame


End file.
